Carla Kihlstedt, ICE, Causing a Tiger & Face the Music: Ecstatic Music Festival

О событии

Multi‐instrumentalist, vocalist and composer Carla Kihlstedt joins the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), “an invaluable gem within the local new‐music ecosphere [that has achieved] national and global renown' (New York Times), to premiere Kihlstedt's new ICElab commission, At Night We Walk in Circles and Are Consumed by Fire. Written for nine members of ICE plus Kihlstedt, the song cycle is based on images, impressions and textures taken from dreams from various sources, including the players themselves. Also on the bill are Kihlstedt's band, Causing a Tiger, and teen alt‐classical sensations Face the Music (called “stunning” and “a force in the New York new‐music world” by the New York Times), who will join ICE in performing the legendary composer George Lewis's Artificial Life 2007.

The title of At Night We Walk in Circles and Are Consumed by Fire is a translation of a Latin palindrome: In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni. It is a song cycle based on images, impressions and textures taken from dreams from various sources, including the players themselves. Kihlstedt brings her experience as both a songwriter and an improviser to the piece, which intersperses eight through‐composed songs with graphic score improvisations. As Kihlstedt explains: 'I've always been struck by the dissonance between our waking and sleeping lives. Regardless of the fact that we spend such significant time in both worlds, we have to leave one to enter the other, bringing with us only the faintest residue, image or inscrutable sensation. My goal with this piece was to bridge these two worlds as much is possible -- to access the unpredictable logic of the dream world, using the particular characters and talents of each musician.'

The Ecstatic Music Festival® returns this winter with more than 120 composers and performers from diverse musical backgrounds coming together for 11 utterly unique and highly original collaborative performances. The festival's musicians – soloists, bands, chamber ensembles, orchestras and everything in between – hail from diverse musical backgrounds, representing a contemporary culture in which the incorporation of many different influences is the norm, not the exception. The festival offers the opportunity for some of today's most compelling musicians to work together in exciting new combinations, allowing them to branch out in fresh, unexpected directions and explore the fertile terrain between classical and popular music. Experience an engaging concert at a festival that is both of and about the present musical moment, at Merkin Concert Hall in the heart of New York City.